Valve announces Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is now available for worldwide pre-purchase on Steam, offering the upcoming multiplayer shooter at a 10% discount. This will also entitle customers to early access to the game's beta on August 14th, which is a week before its planned official release. Word is:

CS: GO expands on the classic team-based action gameplay that Counter-Strike pioneered. Featuring an arsenal of over 45 weapons, loads of maps, new game modes, new visuals, leaderboards and over 165 Steam Achievements.

Additionally, players can take advantage of huge savings on the entire Counter-Strike franchise during this week's Midweek Madness from August 7 - August 9.

ItBurn wrote on Aug 8, 2012, 15:20:I'm not a newb at CS. I played it for years. I was probably better than 95% of people who come on this site. I never liked the aiming system. And aiming was my specialty.

Now, in most modern games, it's still possible to aim perfectly, but you have to go in the right stance, aim down sights and not be moving, among other things.

In general it's far more deep, immersive and is like a mini game on it's own. And also, for me, a lot more fun. Apparently, most gamers agree, because all mainstream games are becoming like this.

I'm not saying that there's no room for oldschool games like CS. I'm also NOT criticizing CS. I'm just saying that I WISH, they would have changed the aiming style, because I did like some of the features of the game.

I also went on to explain a side point: "This just in, guy who dedicates life to activity claims that activity is better than other activities" is a funny headline.

You've changed your stance, I've not changed mine but you have gone ahead and misrepresented it anyway. You said that CS had random aim and implied that even if you tried to aim it would not aim properly... That not the case. While I understand your point that my opinion of the game would be biased, I wasn't giving my opinion, I was refuting an incorrect claim you made. You're now clarifying that it's just your opinion and you're not a fan of the aiming. Fine.

But now to the topic of whether it's dated or lacking features... CS aim is affected by movement, jumping, crouching, weapon selection (and a few have multiple firing modes), the player's rate of fire (clicking/tapping/holding), and ultimately the player's aim. The missing pieces you are lamenting are apparently prone and iron sights. In my opinion Valve made the right decision by deciding not to include those in the game. Prone is traditionally a camping stance (or worse, dolphin diving) and CS certainly doesn't need more campers, it's designed to be a fast game not a plodding one. Iron sights would probably fit better but there are already 6 weapons that feature scopes. Iron sights typically come at the cost of "hip firing" being made extremely inaccurate (randomly so ;P) and I don't think that's something that CS players are itching to experience. As someone already pointed out CS is still the most played PC FPS for a reason and the solid aiming mechanics is a part of that.

Not so much lately, but I play nearly every FPS that comes out. I'm a pretty big Battlefield fan, played tons of Q3, tons of HL and Source mods (but those feature aim/netcode pretty damn close to CS), Enemy Territory, TF2, was big into CoD4 but have not played any since. Clearly by time played CS is my favorite, but I'm not a CS fanboy, at times I'm very critical of the game (you should hear me on voice comm ). You were trying to paint this as "I love CS! There's nothing wrong with it! It's the best!" but that's very far from the truth. Wasn't even about what's "better" but just about dumb claims from people who don't play the game ("but I played a lot 7+ years ago!" big deal).

Speaking of dumb claims from people who don't play the game:

I would get it if it wasn't a 90% of a headshot all the time. It gets old. The hs ratio in CS is far above and beyond any other game.

I'm a headshot machine and my percentage is 51% the server average is 45%. Body shots in CS are very weak, especially for pistols and sub machine guns. A player could spray into the chest with an MP5, hit 5 times, and then the recoil lands the 6th hit on the head... That kills would count as a "headshot" kill and the percentages I quoted come from headshot kills divided by total kills. My point being, most kills from weak weapons will come from headshots because that's the most likely to finish off the enemy.

edit: Ahh, like I said that 51% was my headshot kill percentage (the one you see on the kill feed)... My actual headshot percentage across all bullets landed is 23% (compare with body of 30%). They don't seem to have a server average for that stat but clicking on some random players shows that it's about 13-19%